Related papers: Will Betelguese Explode?
Massive stars end their lives in spectacular supernova explosions. Identifying the progenitor star is a test of stellar evolution and explosion models. Here we show that the progenitor star of the supernova SN 2008bk has now disappeared,…
Massive stars end their short lives in spectacular explosions, supernovae, that synthesize new elements and drive galaxy evolution. Throughout history supernovae were discovered chiefly through their delayed optical light, preventing…
The next core-collapse supernova in the Milky Way or its satellites will represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity to obtain detailed information about the explosion of a star and provide significant scientific insight for a variety of…
Supernovae provide a backdrop from which we can probe the end state of stellar evolution in the final years before the progenitor star explodes. As the shock from the supernova expands, the timespan of mass loss history we are able to probe…
Massive stars can exhibit giant eruptions with high mass loss shortly before their explosion as a core-collapse Supernova. These multiple giant eruptions (MGEs) may have a commutative effect that brings the star to a different state,…
It is estimated that a star brighter than visual magnitude 17 is undergoing a detectable gravitational microlensing event, somewhere on the sky, at any given time. It is assumed that both lenses and sources are normal stars drawn from a…
Superluminous supernovae are a new class of supernovae that were recognized about a decade ago. Both observational and theoretical progress has been significant in the last decade. In this review, we first briefly summarize the…
Supernova 1987A became a milestone in physics and astronomy. The most important things that have been learned from it, the most important problems yet to be solved and the prospects for learning important new physics from future…
Supernova 2023ixf occurred on May 18th 2023 in the nearby galaxy Messier 101 (D ~ 6.85 Mpc), making it the closest supernova in the last decade. Following its discovery, astronomers around the world rushed to observe the explosion across…
In this PhD Thesis we study the occurrence of powerful stellar outbursts in the late phases of evolution of stars like the Sun. This is one of the most controversial topics in the field, as the extraordinary variety of shapes revealed by…
It is often assumed that in the course of the evolution of the universe, the dark energy either vanishes or becomes a positive constant. However, recently it was shown that in many models based on supergravity, the dark energy eventually…
I review our current understanding of superluminous supernovae, mysterious events 100 times brighter than conventional stellar explosions.
Plans for the next generation of optical-infrared telescopes, the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs), are well advanced. With primary apertures in excess of 20m, they will revolutionise our ground-based capabilities. In this review I…
Supernovae (SNe), the luminous explosions of stars, were observed since antiquity, with typical peak luminosity not exceeding 1.2x10^{43} erg/s (absolute magnitude >-19.5 mag). It is only in the last dozen years that numerous examples of…
The continuing difficulty of achieving a reliable explosion in simulations of core-collapse supernovae, especially for more massive stars, has led to speculation concerning the observable transients that might be produced if such a…
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
Vega, the second brightest star in the northern hemisphere, serves as a primary spectral type standard. While its spectrum is dominated by broad hydrogen lines, the narrower lines of the heavy elements suggested slow to moderate rotation,…
Core-collapse supernovae are dramatic events with a rich phenomenology, including gravitational radiation. Simulations of these events in multiple spatial dimensions with energy- and angle-dependent neutrino transport are still in their…
Massive stars (M> 10Msun) end their lives with spectacular explosions due to gravitational collapse. The collapse turns the stars into compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes with the ejection of cosmic rays and heavy…
Whether our universe with present day acceleration can eventually collapse is very interesting problem. We are also interesting in such problems, whether the universe is closed? Why it is so flat? How long to expend a period for a cycle of…